Speeches on the Agenda of the Congress{82}. July 18 (31)

I would first of all like to make two remarks of a particular nature. First, concerning Axelrod's kind (and I say this without irony) proposal to "haggle." I would gladly have followed this call, since I do not at all consider our disagreement so fundamental that the life or death of the party depends on it. We shall not perish from a bad clause in the statutes! But once the matter has come down to choosing between two formulations, I cannot in any way renounce my firm conviction that Martov's formulation represents a deterioration of the original draft—a deterioration that can, under certain conditions, bring considerable harm to the party. The second remark concerns comrade Brueker. It is perfectly natural that, wishing to introduce the elective principle everywhere, comrade Brueker adopted my formulation, which alone defines with some precision the concept of a party member. I therefore do not understand comrade Martov's delight at comrade Brueker's agreement with me. Does comrade Martov really recognize as a guide for himself the opposite of what Brueker says, without examining his motives and arguments?

Turning to the substance of the matter, I shall say that comrade Trotsky has completely failed to understand the fundamental thought of comrade Plekhanov and therefore has bypassed the very crux of the question in his arguments. He spoke of intellectuals and workers, of the class viewpoint and of mass movement, but failed to notice one fundamental question: does my formulation narrow or broaden the concept of a party member? Had he posed this question to himself, he would easily have seen that my formulation narrows this concept, while Martov's broadens it, distinguished (as Martov himself correctly said) by "elasticity." And precisely this "elasticity" at such a period of party life as we are experiencing undoubtedly opens the doors to all elements of discord, wavering, and opportunism. To refute this simple and obvious conclusion, one would have to prove that no such elements exist, and comrade Trotsky did not even think to do this. And it is impossible to prove it, because everyone knows that such elements are numerous, that they exist even within the working class. The safeguarding of firmness of line and purity of principle in the party becomes now a matter that is all the more pressing, because the party, restored to its unity, will admit into its ranks a very great number of unstable elements, whose numbers will increase as the party grows. Comrade Trotsky has very incorrectly understood the fundamental thought of my book *What Is To Be Done?* when he said that the party is not a conspiratorial organization (many others have made this objection to me as well). He forgot that I presuppose in my book an entire series of different types of organizations, ranging from the most conspiratorial and narrowest to the comparatively broad and "free" (lose)[65]. He forgot that the party must be only the vanguard detachment, the leader of the enormous mass of the working class, which in its entirety (or almost entirely) works "under the control and direction" of party organizations, but which does not in its entirety enter the party and should not in its entirety enter the party. Look then, what conclusions does comrade Trotsky arrive at in consequence of his fundamental error! He told us here that if row upon row of workers were arrested and all workers declared their non-membership in the party, ours would be a strange party indeed! Is it not the opposite? Is not comrade Trotsky's reasoning strange? He considers lamentable what would gladden any experienced revolutionary. If hundreds and thousands of workers arrested for strikes and demonstrations turned out not to be members of party organizations, this would only prove that our organizations are sound, that we are fulfilling our task—to keep conspiratorially secure a more or less narrow circle of leaders and to attract to the movement the broadest possible mass. The root of the error of those who stand for Martov's formulation lies in the fact that they not only ignore one of the fundamental evils of our party life, but actually sanctify this evil. This evil consists in the fact that in an atmosphere of almost universal political discontent, under conditions of complete secrecy of work, under conditions where the greater part of activity is concentrated in narrow secret circles and even private meetings, it is for us extremely difficult, almost impossible to distinguish the chatterers from the workers. And scarcely another country can be found in which the confusion of these two categories is so usual, introduces such darkness of confusion and harm, as in Russia. Not only among the intelligentsia, but among the working class as well do we suffer cruelly from this evil, and comrade Martov's formulation legalizes this evil. This formulation inevitably tends to make everyone and each person a member of the party; comrade Martov himself was obliged to acknowledge this with the reservation—"if you wish, yes," he said. Precisely this we do not wish! Precisely for this reason we rise so decisively against Martov's formulation. Better that ten workers do not call themselves party members (true workers are not in pursuit of rank!) than that one chatterer have the right and possibility of being a party member. That is the principle which seems to me irrefutable and which compels me to struggle against Martov. It was objected to me that we grant party members no rights whatsoever, and therefore no abuses can occur. Such an objection is completely untenable: if we have not specified what particular rights a party member receives, note that we have also brought forward no indications whatsoever concerning restrictions on the rights of party members. This, first of all. And secondly, and this is the main point, independently even of rights, one cannot forget that every party member is responsible to the party and the party is responsible for every member. Under our conditions of political activity, in the embryonic state of genuine political organization, it would be directly dangerous and harmful to grant non-members of the organization the right of membership and to impose responsibility on the party for such people who do not enter the organization (and do not enter it, perhaps intentionally). Comrade Martov was horrified at the thought that in court a non-member of a party organization would not have the right, despite his energetic work, to call himself a party member. This does not frighten me. Serious harm would occur, on the contrary, if in court there came forward a person who represents himself discreditably, a man who calls himself a party member while not belonging to any party organization. It is impossible to refute that such a person worked under the control and direction of the organization, it is impossible precisely because of the vagueness of the term. In fact—and on this there can be no doubt—the words "under the control and direction" will lead to the result that there will be neither control nor direction. The Central Committee will never be able to extend genuine control to all those working but not entering the organizations. Our task is to put effective control in the hands of the Central Committee. Our task is to safeguard the firmness, steadiness, purity of our party. We must strive to raise the status and significance of a party member higher, higher and higher—and therefore I am against Martov's formulation.

Checked against the manuscript